I am a writer and editor living and working in New York City. I am Editor of the Roosevelt Institute's Next New Deal blog and my writing has appeared on The Nation, The Atlantic, GOOD Magazine, AlterNet, and others. From women's issues to wonking out, I'm always looking for the stories that can shape the debate. Previously, I was a financial reporter and head of the energy sector at mergermarket, a newswire that is part of the Financial Times Group. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brycecovert.

The buzz around Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, has already begun, even though it doesn’t officially come out until next month. The New York Timesjust published a deep dive into the revolution Sandberg hopes the book will spark, complete with “Lean In Circles” quasi-modeled after consciousness raising groups from the ‘70s. I have some problems with some of Sandberg’s tactics, but the larger problem is that her theory of change relies on women in power transforming the workplace for all other women.

Many have already noted that the Times article sets up the broader discussion Sandberg is taking part in about work/family balance and women in the workplace as a cat fight of sorts. It pits Anne-Marie Slaughter of “have it all” fame against Sandberg, although they’d likely find much in common. The gloss so far seems to be this: Slaughter and those wanting to tackle structural barriers on one side (despite the fact that one of my criticisms of Slaughter’s essay was its lack of structural analysis) and Sandberg and those who want to focus on internal barriers on the other. Sandberg herself, however, goes to great lengths in the book to make it clear that she doesn’t think one is better than the other or should supplant the other. She’s just focusing on the one that she believes is the least talked about (I would disagree) and the easiest for women to take control of (I would definitely agree).

I have problems with the idea that women’s internalized struggles over their careers don’t get any airtime and that policy discussion dominates the conversation. Indeed, the structural side rarely gets discussed because it’s much thornier and far less palatable to business and conservatives. But I can agree with the idea that both the internal and the external can be challenged at the same time and reinforce each other, in an ideal world. My criticism of Lean In is less about Sandberg’s tactics and more about her theory of change.

This theory is no small point tucked away in the back of her book. Sandberg is incredibly up front about her vision of how to change the structures of the workplace to make it friendlier to all women and finally break down the remaining barriers they face. Perhaps the best expression of this theory is her statement toward the end, “I believe that if more women lean in, we can change the power structure of our world and expand opportunities for all. More female leadership will lead to fairer treatment for all women.” Over and over, Sandberg defends her strategy of focusing on changing things at the top because she believes that change will reach down to the bottom.

It’s a nice idea, but it’s incredibly flawed. In fact, there’s little reason to think this is how things will play out. The gods of irony smiled upon those of us making this point over the weekend as the Lean In story circulated alongside another. News surfaced that Marissa Mayer, the female CEO of Yahoo! who started her job while pregnant, sent a memo to employees declaring that by June, all employees will be expected to show up to the office every day, despite a past history of work from home flexibility. The memo noted that Mayer is worried about losing out on “speed and quality” by having employees work remotely.

This news came months after Mayer’s controversial decision to take very little maternity leave after the birth of her baby. She was back at work after two weeks and had also promised to be working pretty steadily during any time off. (Which was obviously done remotely… but I digress.)

Mayer is 100 percent in her rights to make both decisions. She clearly feels that requiring all employees to show up every day will help boost struggling Yahoo!. As new CEO, she seems to have felt that she couldn’t afford to be away from work after the birth of her baby, something that was an option for her either because of a husband or other family member willing to step in and care for a two-week-old infant or the ability to pay for quality care. That is a real privilege that she should of course take advantage of if she desires.

But it belies how unlikely it is that simply sticking more women at the top will mean necessary changes for the women below. Workplace flexibility, made possible by new technologies, is in fact one of the solutions Sandberg has often touted for women seeking to keep leaning into their careers even while raising a family. Any women or men who want to be able to work from home with a sick child or leave early for a kid’s ball game and get back online from home later on will have to make new plans if they wish to stay on. And while Sandberg herself points out in the book that Mayer didn’t go in and slash anyone else’s maternity leave, she certainly didn’t increase the amount of time employees can take off. Worse, she sets an expectation through the behavior she models at the top that it is desirable and perhaps even expected that women not be away very long after the birth of a child. Sandberg’s dream that women in power will transform their companies’ policies to be more women friendly falls short when we look at the Marissa Mayer case study.

Interestingly, the case study Sandberg uses of her own pregnancy also exposes cracks in her theory. She tells the story of being pregnant and having to rush to make a client meeting. The problem was that her car was parked far away because Google had such a growing workforce. She had to “lumber… a bit more quickly than my slow pregnancy crawl” to make it. A light bulb went off in her head: pregnant employees need reserved parking near the building. She took this epiphany straight to founder Sergey Brin, who happily acquiesced, noting that “he had never thought about it before,” likely because he had never been pregnant before. Because a woman at the top had experienced pregnancy, she was able to get this accommodation for all women below her, a feat I’m sure many employees appreciated.

But what about other unmet needs that pregnant employees might need that Sandberg didn’t experience? Mayer, for instance, has the resources to go back to work two weeks after the birth of a baby, so may not realize that her less well off employees need even more time off than they currently have. Sandberg herself admits to being embarrassed that she didn’t even think about reserved parking for pregnant women until she herself was pregnant – had she not wanted to conceive, those employees would still be lumbering across the parking lot. There are likely a variety of needs female Google employees at all levels still have that go unmet because they’re not part of Sandberg’s personal experience. Even a woman intent on transforming her own workplace will have blind spots. Relying on one woman at the top, or even a handful, to understand what all women below them need and to act on that is simply naïve.

It’s also hard to see how any of this helps the huge numbers of women working low-paid jobs. They’re the majority of workers in service sector jobs like retail and food service that offer paltry wages and few, if any, benefits like paid time off or even stable schedules to help arrange childcare. They dominate growing jobs like home health aides and domestic workers who don’t even enjoy all the labor protections afforded other workers and are often subject to abuse. These problems will likely remain untouched even if women like Sandberg and Mayer transform Google and Yahoo!.

This is not to say that the goal of getting more women into the top ranks of the private sector is a bad one. On the contrary, I agree with her that it’s an integral part of full equality. On the level of justice, we can’t pretend we live in an equal society when the centers of power are only held by men – who are often wealthy and white. But there is also economic sense to it, as opening these top positions up to the other half of the population will mean an even more talented slate of candidates to choose from, making sure the best and brightest are better and brighter. And of course having role models like Sandberg and Mayer for young girls who are considering going into the STEM field can often be a very powerful thing.

We just shouldn’t kid ourselves that putting more women at the top solves the structural barriers women face in the economy, particularly toward the bottom rungs. The most extreme examples of how badly that can go wrong are probably Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, two women who have been in powerful positions but have no interest in furthering opportunities for women at the bottom (or, in some cases, anywhere on the ladder). But even progressive, feminist women who want to make things better for all probably can’t pull that off. There are good reasons to push women to be more ambitious and aggressive. They just don’t include transforming working life for all women.

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Thank you Bryce for a very thought provoking article! We do have a way to go in transforming the workplace to an equal footing.

Collectively we need to work together in creating environments that build confidence and foster collaboration, where women WANT TO HELP each other succeed and progress up the corporate ladder into the c-suite and board level.

As someone who has been studying women for years, here is how I see it: Even if we all agreed on a definition for success and women developed themselves as leaders; organizational structures are designed to not advance women in their career.(16% women on all corporate board and 14% senior executives in the US, gender parity at entry level)

A 2008 study by HBS -the Athena Factor concludes that 52% of women in Science, Engineering and Technology leave their career mid-career. The reasons the study sites are: no clear career paths, few role models, hostile work environments, isolation, unequal reward systems, extreme work pressures and lack of sponsorship and mentors.

I have spoken with thousands of women, many that are working in other industries as well and many of these issues ring true for them as well.

Having children was NOT one of the reasons women left their careers mid career in this study.

Maybe this study gives us insight into is the reason why there are more women becoming entrepreneurs then men and by the way women are getting paid better than men as entrepreneurs. Women are leaving their jobs to start companies because they see no career path for themselves. They are tired of butting up against the organizational structure that keep them stalled in their careers

While leading a non profit for women in science and technology, and now as the founder/CEO of WomenLEAD, an online community to advance women in their career, I dug into the Catalyst, Anita Borg Institute, HBS, McKinsey, and Deloitte research on women in the workplace and concluded that for women to be successful in their careers and to advance as leaders they need to develop themselves in the following areas:

Be Passionate about their work and know their purpose Perform equal to or better than men Be visible and manage their visibility Know how to engage people in their ideas Have a leadership experience: managing teams and projects and also learning softer leadership skills: negotiating, influencing without authority, bolstering their personal brand, etc. Learn to mentor others and find sponsors.

I realize that even if a women excels at all of these areas of success, without a fundamental shift in the way our organizations operate, (the organizational cultures and infrastructures) the conditions that women face will not change. Having women at the top may or may not change the organizational cultures and structures that limit women’s success in organizations.

I studied organizational change and leadership with the world’s masters: Peter Senge and Tom Peters while working with them for a span of 14 years and from a systemic view point women need to develop as leaders in the above areas and the organizations that they work in need to transform culturally and structurally.

I believe we need opportunities for women to connect on-line with each other globally to learn from each other, to create self organizing communities of support. To dive into developing themselves as leaders. Which is why I founded WomenLEAD.

Sheryl Sandberg may be naive in thinking that Lean In will cure all ills but I admire her for her courage to step out and go for it. This is the time for women to unite and shift the paradigm we have been operating in for centuries, we are hitting a tipping point of interest, Sheryl’s timing is perfect and is already causing much discussion on the issue. I applaud her for taking on this issue!

Far be it from to stand in the way of book sales, but am I the only woman slightly offended by this ‘movement’? This is not 1913. Women have been in the (often times male dominated) workplace for an awfully long time now. We don’t need special treatment, we just need equal treatment. http://heresheisboys.com/2013/02/27/its-work-after-all/

I completely agree with the statement that there is no guarantee that sticking more women at the top will mean more opportunities for women as a whole. In fact I for one regret having worked for so many women in my career, who every step of the way have been more hindrance than help in furthering my career in technology. Jealousy, and schadenfreude mentalities abound, the senior women have used their power and position to keep the younger ones in check even though our abilities said otherwise. I as a woman, regret having worked for so many women. More thoughts about this Lean in concept are elaborated here http://livedreamwritehappiness.blogspot.com/2013/03/is-lean-in-lost-cause.html

Although I am looking forward to reading “Lean In” next week and think for solving this (as with any problem) we need multiple strategies (thus, I am all for stepping up and leaning in), you make excellent points about the things that aren’t likely to change simply from having more women at the top. I wonder what we can all do to contribute to these structural changes? Like you said, the internal barriers may not be easy to change, but they are within our power and control to change. Interested in your and others thoughts about how to change the structural problems.

I can’t speak for Covert but I feel as though this question is backwards; you’re essentially asking if the end would produce the means. We need structural change first in order to even fathom reaching the point where women and men are equally represented in civic leadership and domestic roles. We can’t place the onus for change on the few women who are already at the top and expect total transformation.